by Becky Clark
“I was just coming over.”
“I couldn’t wait that long.” I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him hard. I pushed him backward into his apartment where he fumbled to close the door behind us.
Twelve minutes later, when we’d finished saying hello, he said, “I’m starving. Are you?”
Queasiness tiptoed around my edges and I knew I had to return to my screwed-up life whether I wanted to or not. “What did you have in mind?”
“Leftover meatloaf?” He pulled a clean t-shirt over his head. I loved the way the fabric stretched over his biceps.
“I’m in.” I slipped on my clothes and followed him to the kitchen. “If you still have some of those heirloom tomatoes from the Farmers Market, I can’t be responsible for my actions.”
He held out a bowl full of tomatoes. “Go crazy.”
Ozzi rummaged through the refrigerator until he found the meatloaf and one piece of leftover corn on the cob. “Arm wrestle you for it.”
“If you loved me, you’d cut it in half.”
“I love you so much, I’d let you have the whole thing.”
“Sure. But only if I beat you arm wrestling.”
“And they say chivalry is dead.” He booped me on my nose with his nose, since his hands were both full.
I sliced tomatoes. He boiled water for the corn then placed slices of meatloaf to be heated in the microwave. When the water was roiling, he dropped in the two halves of corn. He zapped the meatloaf and dropped a mini-cob on each plate. I slathered butter over the corn, watching it drip seductively down the sides, eventually disappearing under the sliced meatloaf. Then I forked tomatoes next to them.
As we cooked and ate, I told Ozzi about my day, starting with the pregnancy suit and the Braid, and ending with Archie Cruz ambushing me and my social media blowing up this afternoon.
He had a forkful of meatloaf halfway to his mouth, but stopped it in mid-air. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It just happened a couple hours ago. And I was trying to forget about it. Just wanted to have a nice, normal dinner with you.”
Ozzi smiled, but said, “I think you won’t see many days of nice and normal until you find Lapaglia.”
“I suspect you’re probably right.” I stabbed my last bite of tomato a bit too aggressively. “I hate him.”
“I do too.” Ozzi made an elaborate show of stabbing his last bite of meatloaf over and over until it was a pile of crumbs on his plate.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “But aren’t you his Number One Fan and the keeper of his Wikipedia page?”
“Not after this.” He used a finger to corral his meatloaf crumbs onto his fork. “I was, but no more.”
I knew that to be the case after Saturday, but it was nice to hear him say it.
“He’s dead to me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know. But I’ve been thinking more and more that maybe he is ... hurt. I mean, nobody else seems to be worried about that, but what if he fell off the train, or was pushed off, or is shackled in some crazy girlfriend’s basement? What if I’m the only one concerned about him and not just because he owes me money? His wife doesn’t care. The train people don’t care. The cops don’t care. Maybe his girlfriends care, but I’m not seeing it.” Being with Ozzi and eating a good dinner had me in a sturdier state of mind. I planted my palms solidly on the table. “How ‘bout you use your vast Wikipedia knowledge for good and help me figure out where he might be?”
Ozzi stood and carried our dishes to the sink. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“And?”
“And I haven’t really come up with anything.”
I helped him load the dishwasher. “Maybe you’re too close to all the facts you know about him. What if you just started telling me all the weird and arcane information you know, and we can try to sort it out together. See if it’s useless trivia or not.”
“Okay. Like what?”
“Like anything.” I washed off the table while he cracked his knuckles like he was preparing to play Rachmaninov’s Prelude in G Minor.
“He was born in Paramus, New Jersey.”
“Automatically makes him highly suspect.” We sat down next to each other on the couch. I tucked my legs up under me and leaned against him.
“His mom was Dona Donatelli.” At my blank look he added, “A fairly influential watercolor artist. Left the family when Lapaglia was just a kid.”
“Any siblings?”
“Nope, just him.”
“What else?”
“Let’s see.” Ozzi stared into spaced, accessing his mental filing cabinet. “He writes his first drafts longhand with a blue Bic pen. After his assistant types it up, he destroys the handwritten version.”
“Hm. That’s interesting. So there’s no actual proof he writes his books.” I told Ozzi about my conversation with Annamaria.
“So his wife could be the actual author? That’s wild.”
“Maybe. What else?”
“His friends from high school grew up to have interesting careers, too, like—”
“Butcher, baker, and candlestick maker?”
“Close. Olympic swimmer, FBI agent, and one of the shuttle astronauts.”
“Wow. I have a friend from high school who almost got to sing the National Anthem at a Sky Sox game. And another who got caught shoplifting. By my dad, actually. That was some special kind of drama.”
“I can imagine. We weren’t friends or anything, but a guy I went to school with lost on Dancing With The Stars.”
“Cool.”
“Yes, but I don’t think this is getting us anywhere.” Ozzi stood to get his laptop. He sat back down and placed it on his right knee and my left. He pulled up the Wikipedia page, scrolling until he came to a list of live links to interviews Lapaglia had given over the years.
“Here. Read these while I go whip up some brownies. Maybe they’ll tell you something.” He slid the laptop completely on to my thighs then kissed me. “Nuts, right?”
I rolled my eyes at him. He knew very well my issue with nuts. It tickled him no end when I had to relinquish something delicious Barb had baked with nuts. A long time ago I’d told her I was allergic, but over the years she’d forgotten. In fact, she spun it all the way around and apologized to me when she baked something without nuts, thinking that I loved them. No way was I going to tell her, though. It wasn’t her job to remember my allergies.
While Ozzi banged around his kitchen making nut-free brownies, I read online interviews with Rodolfo Lapaglia. They covered all the same basic information—age, education, titles and synopses of the many books he’d written—but some wanted to ask him more targeted questions. One wanted to focus on how he got his start in publishing. One wanted to focus on the niche he created for himself in writing thrillers about the mob. One was a round-up piece of famous people from Paramus, New Jersey. Who knew there’d be so many? One even wanted his favorite recipe, clearly using Lapaglia’s celebrity to get more eyeballs on her cooking blog.
By the time Ozzi got the pan of brownies in the oven and plopped down next to me, my eyes were crossing.
“I’m not finding anything very useful.”
Ozzi pulled the laptop toward him. “Want me to read to you?”
“Mm-hm.” I pointed to the one I was going to read next. Then I closed my eyes and snuggled down so my head rested comfortably against the back of the couch.
He began reading the next interview.
I listened for a while, but the questions and answers sounded so similar to the other interviews I found it hard to pay attention. But something caught my attention. “Wait. Go back.”
Ozzi read, “What is the biggest problem with being such a famous author? Lapaglia says, I’m pigeonholed. I’m stuck writing the same types of books over and over—”
I pulled the laptop over so we were sharing it again. I scrolled up to the previous article. “Look. He says a ve
rsion of that same thing in every interview, even when he’s not asked about it.” I pointed to some text. “I’d love to do something different, but I can’t.” I scrolled to the interview above that one. “My fans and my publisher expect the same thing from me each time.” I clicked on another interview. “And here. I can’t go anywhere, I can’t do anything. I’m just a hamster on a wheel.”
I closed the lid of the computer and thought for a minute.
“What?”
“I don’t know. But I think that’s important. He says it in every interview. He’s not happy. If I can believe his wife, they probably don’t have a very happy life in Nebraska.” I looked at Ozzi. “I think he disappeared himself.”
Ozzi mulled over my words for a bit. “But why not just get a divorce and start a new life? Why all the drama?”
“This mob guy ... the Braid. It’s probably no secret the mob is after him. I mean, his books are not at all complimentary to them and maybe he does know too much about them. That’s what the Braid accused me of when we got into that hair-pulling contest.”
“Hair-pulling contest! You make it sound like it was a girl fight at a slumber party.” Ozzi pulled me close, subconsciously trying to protect me.
I shook him off, not wanting him to think I was worried about the Braid. “I told you. I gave as good as I got. I’ve got the height and weight advantage over that weasel. Don’t worry about me.”
“I do worry about you.”
“I know. But don’t.”
“Just be careful.”
“Ozzi, my love, I’m not going to go looking for trouble. I am trying my best to stay away from him. But I can’t hide in my apartment and I’ve got to find Peter. I’ve learned that hiding doesn’t actually help anything anyway. Not when most of my friends were murder suspects, not when my dad was killed”—the oven timer went off—“not when people put nuts in my brownies.”
He knew that meant it was time to change the subject and check on the brownies.
I followed him into the kitchen, inhaling deeply the chocolate aroma floating from the oven, and watched while he poked the middle of the brownies with a toothpick to see if they were done. “I’m all over the place with theories. Lapaglia fell off the train, or Martina is holding him hostage, or the mob whacked him, or his wife did, or his wife’s boyfriend did.” I shook my head. “But the more I think about it, the more I think he disappeared himself, Oz. For some reason he didn’t feel he could just get a divorce.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know his wife has a boyfriend. Maybe he thinks he and his wife are happy.” He made quick cuts to create nine perfectly symmetrical brownies.
“I suppose that’s possible. But when I talked to her it seemed very clear they were not.”
“Well,” Ozzi said, sliding a brownie on a small plate. “You know how stupid men can be.” He handed me the plate.
“These smell fantastic.” I kissed him. “Clearly, he hadn’t made her enough brownies during their time together.”
“That makes him stupid.”
Fourteen
I spent the night at Ozzi’s, only half aware that he’d received a call in the middle of the night and left, mumbling something about a glitch in his software. I assumed it had literal meaning.
He returned, coming up behind me just as I locking his front door.
“Ugh, I was hoping you’d still be here,” he said.
“Technically I am.”
He rubbed a hand over his bleary face. “What?”
“Never mind.” I unlocked his door and ushered him into his apartment. “Straight to bed with you, mister. You’ve got about four hundred hours of sleep to catch up on. You’ve been working too many hours on this project.” I pushed him down the hall toward the bedroom. “Are you hungry?”
“No. Ate all night.”
“Anything healthy?”
“Nope.” He kicked off his shoes, then dropped his pants. His phone bounced out of his pocket and I picked it up.
“Can I turn it off so you can sleep?” I closed the drapes. “Expecting any more emergencies?”
“Is that an oxymoron?”
“I’m turning off your phone.”
“But—”
I moved to his nightstand. “I’m setting your alarm clock for eight hours. Then you can wake up and check your phone for any emergencies. I’ll leave it on the coffee table.”
“I’d argue with you, but I’m too tired.”
I kissed him, tucked him in, and left the room, closing the door behind me. I turned the ringer off on his phone and set it on the table before making my way to critique group.
I hadn’t planned on going today, since I didn’t have any pages to submit. Plus, I felt scattered enough that I probably wouldn’t give any constructive feedback to anyone who was diligent enough to submit pages today. But it occurred to me that my critique group could help me think through this real-life plot twist I found myself in. After all, I asked them for brainstorming help all the time. The only difference here was that it wasn’t for one of my fictional mysteries.
As I drove to the exit of my apartment complex parking lot and waited for traffic to clear, I looked to my left and saw Nova sitting in front of Espresso Yourself like she was the doorman. Doorperson. Doordog. She was so cute I had to fight the urge to turn the steering wheel that direction in order to go visit her. However, I knew that Kell would have breakfast and delicious hot coffee waiting when I got to his house. Visiting Nova would be a balm to my soul, but would make me late.
I bumped into the driveway of Kell’s McMansion a little bit early. I thought back to all the times I got here late for our meeting. For many years I detoured a few miles out of my way so I could drive past the parking lot where my dad had been gunned down when I was a teenager. I rarely stopped, just wanted that connection and maybe some answers. I got those answers recently so I’d been able to drive straight to Kell’s without the detour. I also didn’t have much of the tremor that had developed after Dad’s murder. That meant I didn’t have to change clothes after spilling something on myself, which so often had made me late.
A light tap on my window made me jump. Kell’s twenty-something valet. Before I opened the car door, I flicked my dad’s old locker key hanging from my rearview mirror. Miss you, Dad.
“Hello, Miss Russo. Looking lovely as always.” He held his hand to help me out, which I took.
“Thank you, Tyler. How are you today?”
“Just fine, ma’am.”
Ma’am. Ouch. He was probably only five years younger than me. “Stay in the air conditioning today. It’s gonna be a hot one.”
“Will do, ma’am.” He slid into my seat and drove it off to Kell’s garage, which I imagined to be as big as an auto showroom, and just as pristine. I never had to go looking for my car after our meeting because all our cars were lined up waiting for us, like we were VIPs in some obscure Literary Parade.
Everything at Kell Mooney’s house was fancy. Except Kell. He opened the door wearing wrinkled khakis that were a size too big. The side of his round balding head still had traces of what appeared to be sheet marks. He was just finishing buttoning his shirt.
“You’re here early!” Kell stepped aside to let me in.
“I know. It’s like I’m a grown-up or something.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
I thought about all the turmoil in my life lately. “Not that great, actually. But at least I have that time management thing whipped.”
He placed a comforting hand in the middle of my back and steered me toward the solarium, even though I could get there blindfolded, I’d been here so often.
The side table was groaning with food, as it always did for our meetings. Kell’s staff had learned to put out everyone’s favorite breakfast foods: yogurt and pastries for me; one soft-boiled egg and half a piece of whole wheat toast for Cordelia; AmyJo’s cheesy bacon and eggs; doctor-recommended oatmeal with berries for Heinrich; Thaddeus “Einstein” Eichhorn’s as
sortment of individual boxes of sugared cereal; Jenica’s new-found obsession with chicken and waffles; and of course, Kell’s cottage cheese.
I couldn’t picture Kell ever eating anything other than bland cottage cheese. Not that his personality was bland, but his thrillers—all unpublished—certainly were. I thought of them as milders.
I’ve often wondered what would happen if I chose someone else’s favorite food. I mean, it was all served buffet-style for anyone to take. Nothing was labeled with anyone’s name, but would it create some scary Mad Max-type dystopian domino effect? Would we devolve into a demented Lord of the Flies alternate universe? It might be a fun social experiment, but I suspect Cordelia would be polite and simply say she’d already eaten. Jenica would roll her eyes then stare unblinking until whoever had her chicken and waffles relinquished them back to her. Nobody would choose Einstein’s cereal or Kell’s cottage cheese. AmyJo would surprise everyone by using her fork to stab anyone who came close to her bacon and eggs and Heinrich would revert to his native German, spewing a scary phlegm-laced diatribe. And then he’d scrape half his food onto the plate of the offender because maybe they really wanted it.
Yes, someday I must attempt this, but today is not that day.
I dropped my bag on the floor by the empty seat next to Cordelia and greeted her. She stopped delicately tapping the shell of her egg long enough to smile up at me. “Good morning, dear.” When she went back to her task, her two-inch diamond studded cuff bracelet slid, allowing me a glimpse of the small but shocking red tattoo of the devil playing bass guitar on the inside of her wrist. She didn’t try to hide it, but didn’t flaunt it either and it always took me a bit by surprise. To see her walking into a high-end shop or spa, you’d never know she was a Led Zeppelin fan or wrote the filthiest erotica known to mankind.
I loved that about her and wished I had anything enigmatic about me.
As I carefully held a porcelain cup under the spigot of the coffee urn that probably cost as much as my car, Einstein and Heinrich walked in together.
